The Origins of Psychically Gifted Selkies
by Hyper Librarian's Daughter
Summary: Told in the point of view of a male Selkie Sage named Clarence. He and his Selkie Scholar friend Augustine kept a secret from the villagers of late: both Selkies developed strange powers that enable them to talk with their thoughts and to move things by staring at them. The true names of these powers are unknown until Clarence's Selkie Red Mage brother Bertrand reveals them.


_The Origins of Psychically Gifted Selkies_

This is a story that takes place before my best friend Augustine, a Selkie like me, and I underwent our village's coming-of-age ceremony.

Clarence is my name. Clarence Knowledge Rigby. Though I have blue hair like most others of my tribe consisting of nature-loving thieves and brigands, not to mention the tribe itself being predominantly female, that is not the only thing that defines me. Only my fellow Selkie Professors, including my redhead Red Mage brother Bertrand, my best Scholar friend Augustine and his transgendered Summoner sibling Florence, and my dearly beloved Claire, a Sage like me, know my secret that sets me (and them) apart from other Selkies (especially the tribe's few males, all of them unintelligent).

The village in the forest. Augustine and I were raised here by the villagers of late. When we were kids, we always had fun playing with Eryll, Ullz, and Phelple. Unlike the latter mentioned boys of late, however, Augustine and I almost never got into trouble. (Both of us got into trouble only once, and after that punishment from our foster mother Tratt in which we had to kneel for a few hours, we never dared to cause any more trouble again.)

Every night, when Sherlotta and the villagers were fast asleep, Augustine and I stayed awake even as we were in bed. We talked to each other about our days...but for some strange reason we were unaware that we were not even moving our mouths.

_Ah, Augustine, I cannot find myself to fall asleep..._

_Same with me, Clarence. How was your day?_

_Good as usual. The same for you?_

_Of course. _

Then, complete silence.

_I suspect that Sherlotta is still asleep?_

I got up from my bed, assuming a sitting position. I saw her asleep. _Yes, she is._ Then I lied down and looked at Augustine. _For some reason she cannot seem to hear our thoughts._

_Ah, yes, but I do not know why..._

_Well, let us not worry about that, Augustine. We have another day of play ahead of us. Good night._

_See you in the morning, Clarence._

Augustine and I held that memory of being punished for getting into trouble, so every day we kept our time playing outside short. The village kids of late always played with each other while the teens and adults do their errands. After our outside time, Augustine and I return to our home, where we lost ourselves in a book that we take from the shelf beside the fireplace. As we grew older, we spent the bulk of our time reading more books from that particular shelf. We read the following books:

_The Adamantoise and the Cactuar_

_Titan and the Beanstalk_

_The Ugly Chocoling_

_Unicorn and the Town Musicians_

_Shiva and Ifrit_

_The Boy Who Cried Leviathan_

_The Three Little Piggies_

_Mini Red Riding Hood_

_Legend of the Crystal_

_The Four Warriors of Light_

_Four Tribes of the World_

...And so on. Augustine and I even read about the chronicles of a crystal caravan from a distant town, the story of fraternal Clavat twins at the center of an ancient prophecy on the blood red moon, and the life of a young king who rebuilds his kingdom. The more we read, the more we developed our brains to the point in which they brimmed with more than enough knowledge to fit the Crystal Core! Having this much knowledge made us more than brilliant, but it also contributed to something more within us, something that Sherlotta and the villagers of late were unaware of.

Every night, there was never a moment in which Augustine and I sleep with blankets...until this one night. The fire was out, so we both shivered. I stared at the blanket that I have always tossed whenever I went to bed. Augustine did the same to the other blanket. Remembering that moment in which he and I were punished for getting into trouble and kneeling for a few hours, we were beside ourselves with anger. But we never held our anger for Tratt; we held it for ourselves, who should not have caused trouble in the first place.

Though we shivered, we suddenly found ourselves beginning to sweat the more we stared at the blankets. An unseen aura of energy began to well up within us...

(Ohhh, we feel so cold... We need those blankets...)

...And much of it went to our eyes.

(By the crystal, we are freezing...!)

We locked our eyes on the blankets. Then we began to see yellow.

(Please, by the crystal, we do not want to freeze...!)

All of a sudden, the blankets started to move toward us. But how can this be? We are in bed shaking like leaves.

(We will not freeze...for the rest of the night...!)

As we saw the blankets coming toward us, they began to float up in the air.

(Do...not...let...us...freeze...)

Augustine and I blinked our yellowed eyes, and the blankets fell on the floor beside our beds. We still shivered despite being drenched with sweat, but we managed to regain ourselves. We took deep breaths, grabbed our blankets, and wrapped ourselves in them. We slept through the night...

...But on the next day we woke up, muddled about what happened last night without Sherlotta noticing. Why did the blankets that Augustine and I stared at began to move by themselves without _any _of us dragging them? Why did we see yellow, even though everything around us is not yellow? We were too groggy to even know, so we went back to sleep even as the sun began to shine from the window.

From that day on, Augustine and I began to practice our emerging ability to move things that we stare at after our playtime and story time. But we only do that when Sherlotta is not in our house cooking Toumli's cream stew or Ilina's veggie soup she brings home for dinner, or when she is asleep. The very few years before Augustine and I turned 16 to undergo our coming-of-age ceremony, we developed this new ability at a very fast rate. By the day before the day of our coming-of-age ceremony, we could move _anything_ without the need to be fixated for very long.

_One day, several days after Clarence and Augustine discovered and accepted the heartbreaking truth about the villagers of late, Sherlotta, and Larkeicus..._

Augustine and I lost touch... He went aboard an airship and left for another world to study abroad as a professor. It was his way of trying to get over the heartbreak he and I went through after the day of our coming-of-age ceremony. But not only that, he also found his ideal path for his future.

I spent my time embarking on quests. Most were difficult, but I kept going. My brother Bertrand tagged along with me, and so both of us completed the entire list of quests together. We grew closer to each other.

After many days of questing, Bertrand and I spent some time in the library, still infested with monsters. I told him about my power to move anything by staring. But he was not amazed, as if he knew about it.

"How...?" I asked.

"Allow me to demonstrate," Bertrand said.

He browsed the bookshelves until he found one book (an updated version of _Anthology of Magicology_) in a shelf beside the reception desk. The book was located above the clock, but it was beyond reach. Bertrand quickly concentrated the unseen energy emerging in him into his eyes, which gleamed yellow. The book above the clock began to move, leaving the shelf and floating in the air. It then went to my Red Mage brother, and he caught it. Bertrand blinked, and saw the world around him in their usual colors.

I locked my eyes on a book called _River Belle Nature Guide _that was beyond reach due to being stacked up by so many other books. The unseen energy gathered in me and traveled to my eyes, making them gleam yellow. Then the book moved, leaving the stack and flying toward me. I blinked to see the world's usual colors and caught the book.

Bertrand nodded contently. _How remarkable, Clarence, on your mastery of telekinesis..._

Telekinesis... So that was this power to move things by staring is... Before Bertrand mentioned the name of that ability, it was just "the power to move things by staring" to me and Augustine. Bertrand told me that staring alone does not activate this power; the eyes and the brain have to be used together to charge mental energy into the body. I even learned that telekinesis is even more potent when you think of a bad thought or memory. In the case of me and Augustine, our bad memory is our punishment for getting into trouble in the village. In Bertrand's case, he told me, he had bad memories of his moments of defeat during his adventures.

Our conversations were always between our thoughts. Bertrand told me that this power is called telepathy.

_It is the transference of thoughts between two individuals who are closely connected_, my brother said.

Telekinesis and telepathy... How could me, Augustine, and Bertrand, of all male Selkies, know these mind powers? There was one thing we knew for sure: they just struck us like a bolt from casting a Thundaja spell.

_Several months later..._

Augustine returned from abroad, his knowledge widened. He and I, along with Bertrand, spent so many days adventuring and learning from each other through lessons. Those were our best moments together, especially after Augustine's transgendered sibling Florence joined us. We traveled as the party of the four "most intelligent of our tribe" (which we still are today): the Selkie Professors.


End file.
